


Five Times They Found Steve

by JeannetteRankin



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeannetteRankin/pseuds/JeannetteRankin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cross-posting this old kink meme fill from <a href="http://jeannetterankin.livejournal.com/1988.html">my lj</a>. Tagged as Gen because relationships are minor and not central to the story. (Can you tell I was confused about how to tag this? Haha)</p><p>Fill for this kink meme prompt: <i>A Five times kind of fic exploring all the possible age differences between Tony and Steve, depending on when Steve got defrosted. A couple where Steve is older than Tony, one where they're around the same age and a couple where Tony is the older one... </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times They Found Steve

ONE

"Can you really lift a motorcycle over your head?" wide-eyed little Tony Stark asked him the first time they met.

"No," Steve admitted.

"Oh, good," Tony nodded seriously. "I couldn't figure out how the physics for that would work."

\--

"Hey, kiddo." Tony was sitting in the corner of the library, with his head down. He didn't respond.

Steve sat down on the carpet next to him, resting his elbows on his knees. They sat in silence for a while.

"I don't want to go to stupid summer camp. My dad's making me go 'cause I was bad."

"I'm sure that's not true."

"That's what he said. He said it was too hard for my mom to have me here all the time, I got in so much trouble, so I have to go away to camp for the whole summer."

Steve sighed, but couldn't think of anything to say in reply.

After a minute or two, Steve nudged Tony's shoulder and asked, "Hey, do you want to show me how something works?" The last few weeks since Steve had woken up, one of Tony's favorite pastimes had been to catch him up on 1970s technology. Generally by dismantling it.

A little pause, a little sniff. "Like what?" 

"How about the VCL?"

"You mean the VCR?"

"Right."

"It's not that complicated, Cap." Tony sounded like a miniature version of his father, raising his eyebrow at everyone around him being too dense to keep up. A fond smile almost stole its way onto Steve's lips, but he stopped it in time.

"Well, maybe not to a genius like you. But I still don't see how they can fit the whole movie into such a little box."

"Come on, I'll show you." Tony rolled his eyes, but he stood up, grabbing Steve's hand, and leading him off to the TV room. There would probably be a destroyed VCR to explain by the end of the afternoon, but Steve knew Howard could afford a new one.

\---

"My dad said I can stay!"

"Wow, Tony, that's great! Think of all the stuff we'll get to do this summer."

A shrewd look came into his eyes. "You did it. I know you did. How'd you get my dad to let me stay?"

Steve gave him his best shiny grin. "I'm Captain America. I can do things like that."

"Wow."

 

TWO

Steve had been back three months. It had hardly taken three hours before the fanmail started coming. Tony'd seen the gentle responses Steve sent back to the girls--and a few boys--who wrote in confessing their love. (If Steve hadn't wanted Tony to read his mail, he shouldn't have left them out like that. In his bedroom. In a desk drawer.) He appreciated their offer of a date/wedding/night of passionate sex, but he couldn't accept. He was busy with his responsibilities. He was sure they would make some lucky person very happy some day, but he couldn't be that person.

So Tony knew exactly what would happen if he kissed Steve the way he wanted to every time he saw him in his sweaty workout gear (or in his uniform, or really just every time he saw him). Steve would--so very gently--push him away and tell Tony that, though he might be a precocious genius, he was still a fifteen-year-old, and that Steve was too old for him and that he valued Tony's friendship too much to damage it.

Tony could at least watch. And wait. And plan. He wasn't a genius for nothing.

When Tony was eighteen, six months out of college and spending almost all his time holed up in his tiny Boston apartment coding--when he wasn't going down to New York to bug Steve with some new invention for his superheroing (all part of the *plan*)--Steve met Madeline. 

Madeline was smart and funny and kind and perfect for Steve. That was okay. Tony's plan had accounted for this possibility. His projections had indicated a ninety percent probability that he could break them up within three weeks.

Tony was a groomsman in the wedding eleven months later.

 

THREE

Tony had been called in to the facility in Newfoundland. It was urgent. Everything for the past week had been *urgent*, fuck you very much. No one knew what to pass on to him, what went to Obie. It was a gigantic clusterfuck. But this alert had been set up by his father, personally, to override just about anything else. And since he had hardly had time to go through all the various lines of communication and prune out the ones he didn't need, it came straight to him like everything else.

So here he was in the back end of nowhere at a secret Stark DevEx facility, called here on an urgent alert for ... something.

"Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah."

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Stark, to hear about--"

"Yeah, thanks. So what've we got? Will you please explain to me why I am in *Canada*?"

\---

"I heard one of them talking about 'Mr. Stark.' I guess I was expecting Howard."

"The old man kicked the bucket last week."

"What?"

"Yup! He's gone. Gonzo. Gonzorrini. Done."

"I'm ... I'm so sorry." And he really sounded it. This square-jawed, blond, wholesome, recently-defrosted legend looked at him with sorrowful blue eyes. He wasn't kissing up to Tony, he wasn't calculating anything, he wasn't shamming grief. He was just honestly sorry to hear that his friend was dead. It didn't grate on his nerves the way all those other people's sorrys did. It was just ... there.

Tony cleared his throat, surprised by the sudden lump there. "It was a car accident." It was the first time Tony had had to *tell* anyone what happened. "He and my mother were both in the car--it ran off the road. They died on impact."

"Oh, god, that's terrible. When is the--when are they having the funeral?"

"This Saturday."

"I'd like to be there, if that's okay."

Tony nodded. "I'll make sure you're there."

 

FOUR

"You can't get drunk? At all?"

"Nope, not anymore. I metabolize it too fast to get more than a little tingle."

"Do you want to?"

"Sometimes."

"Like now? Everyone you know is dead. Of course you want to get drunk! Time to introduce you to another modern marvel."

"Oh?"

"Everclear."

\---

"Is this what you do?"

"What?"

"Is this what you do--drink, and party, and tinker around with whatever you want, then blow off meetings at your company about it?"

"Yup. Pretty much. You've nailed it. Pretty good life, right?"

"Uh ... sure."

 

FIVE

"I've missed over a hundred years." Steve looked down at his hands. "It's still hard to believe."

"You were never forgotten."

"Really?"

"You were a big part of the reason I became Iron Man in the first place, you know. You inspired me. I wish I could have had the chance to fight alongside you, Cap." He sighed and ran his palm down the armor's breastplate in its alcove of his workshop. "I sponsor the New Avengers now. It's a good crew. If you'd like a place in it, we'd be honored to have you. There's still villains to fight, innocents to protect, that sort of thing. Just up your alley."

 

PLUS ONE

The Avengers stood together surveying the damage from the battle with Loki's creatures. Few civilian casualties, no deaths. They'd won. Together, they'd won.

Tony looked at Cap--Steve--and smiled.


End file.
